LoisLane327

Welcome

Welcome to Wikipedia, and especially to the motorcycling project. If you have any questions just ask on the project talk page - there are plenty of us willing to help. --Biker Biker (talk) 21:39, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Welcome! You might want to think about changing your user name. See Wikipedia:Username policy. You won't automatically be blocked, but you can be if conflicts of interest arise. See Wikipedia:Changing username. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 22:29, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Hopefully, since I own the domain.com I will be OK, because that's who I am and what I do. I'm a news reporter with a degree in journalism, who specializes in writing advance stories and feature stories about the builders, special events and venues, and the hard work involved in producing big shows and big rallies.MotorcycleEventNews (talk) 23:12, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't know if I have enough hours in my day to learn Wiki, but I am fascinated. It's such a whole different language... just trying to figure out how to add a reference link, etc. or an image. Oh boy.MotorcycleEventNews (talk) 23:20, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm afraid you misunderstand the username policy. Take a careful look at WP:ORGNAME. It says "Unambiguous use of a name or URL of a company, group or product as a username is generally not permitted." You own the URL MotorcycleEventNews.com and your user name is MotorcycleEventNews. Generally, that's not cool at Wikipedia. If you keep editing articles related to motorcycle rallies, you'll probably be blocked from editing. Probably: I don't enforce policy. I'm just saying what I think it says, and I've observed that admins have blocked many similar user accounts. If you only edit articles about birdwatching or Siberian folk dances nothing will happen, but it's when you intersect your organization name + your user name + COI topic that problems happen. Better to avoid problems before they start to keep the hurt feelings to a minimum. Also maybe read Wikipedia:FAQ/Organizations. Thanks! --Dennis Bratland (talk) 23:36, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Also. Hotlinks to images hosted elsewhere don't work on Wikipedia. See Wikipedia:Image use policy and Wikipedia:Picture tutorial. You'll need to upload the image to Wikipedia. See: Wikipedia:Upload, which entails using the CC-BY-SA license. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 23:47, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

You are personally welcome here and I hope you will contribute to the motorcycle articles but I too suggest you register a personal user name and not one associated with your organisation. BTW, uploaded images must be freely licenced which may be one of the free Creative Commons licences or they can be even freer by being released into the public domain. Regarding image use you may find it useful to read my image copyright information page. We are happy to help you learn the ropes; just ask. Good luck. ww2censor (talk) 01:25, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

WOW, Wv2censor - 60,000 contributions in 5 plus years! You guys are all great in offering me advice, and thank you for your patience and good will. Let me see if I can change my name... or otherwise come back with a more personalized persona. Thanks Again. MotorcycleEventNews (talk) 04:15, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Well done for changing username. You need to know that this doesn't absolve you of any conflict of interest issues - so you should be careful when editing content relating to any events that you are promoting (see WP:COI). You have already taken the first steps towards compliance by stating on your user page events that you are connected to. --Biker Biker (talk) 12:37, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

I have a journalism degree and have covered just about every news beat from cops to courts, county government to community desk, from federal grand jury indictments to dog parks. So I understand the unbiased news approach as well as the recent move to hire "insiders" with a specialty degree in the topic such as "medicine." My goal is to make sure there is more information that is well cited and factual, especially in areas where I know a lot of the true history. I am amazed at how well-documented some aspiring young builders are (for instance) compared to some of the bike builders who have been around for decades and were undoubtedly some of the first custom bike builders. For instance, I read a post on the Biker Build Offs TV Show, which listed all of the various bike builders that have appeared in the series and found "Ron Finch" directly linked from the TV Show history to the bio of a basketball coach. I have interviewed and written probably the most inclusive recent interview titled "Rolling Through The Decades with Ron Finch" that is published on my website. I am able to cite five or six articles that tell bits and pieces of the full story, so I will include all of those cites. But I assume that I can include my 2011 interview as part of what I cite. Right? MotorcycleEventNews (talk) 20:10, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

No, if it is entirely self-published, then it fails WP:RS. See WP:SPS and WP:SELFCITE. If you wrote it and gave it to an editor and they published it in a newspaper,. But if the author, editor, and publisher are all one in the same, as on typical blogs, then it's self published. The typical exception would be an article that is citing, say, Sarah Palin's opinion about something, and we cited one of Palin's tweets as the source. You want to try to stick with material that's been published in third party publications.--Dennis Bratland (talk) 23:21, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your patience in explaining these things. 24.170.186.150 (talk) 23:42, 27 May 2011 (UTC)